62 IN CARLYLE'S COUNTRY. 



ble a hard spot in the brick, but not essentially a 

 part of it. 



Every close view I got of the Scotch character 

 confirmed my liking for it. A most pleasant episode 

 happened to me down in Ayr. A young man whom 

 I stumbled on by chance in a little wood by the 

 Doon, during some conversation about the birds that 

 were singing around us, quoted my own name to me. 

 This led to an acquaintance with the family and with 

 the parish minister, and gave a genuine human col- 

 oring to our brief sojourn in Burns's country. In 

 Glasgow I had an inside view of a household a little 

 lower in the social scale but high in the scale of vir- 

 tues and excellences. I climbed up many winding 

 stone stairs and found the family in three or four 

 rooms on the top floor : a father, mother, three sons, 

 two of them grown, and a daughter, also grown. 

 The father and the sons worked in an iron foundry 

 near by. I broke bread with them around the table 

 in the little cluttered kitchen, and was spared apolo- 

 gies as much as if we had been seated at a banquet 

 in a baronial hall. A Bible chapter was read after 

 we were seated at table, each member of the fam- 

 ily reading a verse alternately. When the meal was 

 over, we went into the next room, where all joined 

 in singing some Scotch songs, mainly from Burns. 

 One of the sons possessed the finest bass voice I had 

 ever listened to. Its power was simply tremendous, 

 well tempered with the Scotch raciness and tender- 

 ness, too. He had taken the first prize at a public 



